Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Zoology A hard bony or chitinous outer covering, such as the fused dorsal plates of a turtle or the portion of the exoskeleton covering the head and thorax of a crustacean.
  • noun A protective, shell-like covering likened to that of a turtle or crustacean.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The shell of a turtle or tortoise; specifically, the upper shell, the under shell being called the plastron.
  • noun In Mammalia, the shell of an armadillo.
  • noun In Cirripedia, the multivalvular shell, test, or case.
  • noun In higher Crustacea, the shield covering the cephalothorax, sometimes separable into a cephalostegite and an omostegite. See cut under Apus.
  • noun One of the many hard cases, tests, or shells which are likened to a carapace, as those of certain infusorians; a lorica.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Zoöl.) The thick shell or shield which covers the back of the tortoise, or turtle, the crab, and other crustaceous animals.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A hard protective covering of bone or chitin.
  • noun in figurative use

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun hard outer covering or case of certain organisms such as arthropods and turtles

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French, from Spanish carapacho.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French carapace ("tortoise shell"), from Portuguese carapaça ("carapace, shell"), of uncertain origin.

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Examples

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  • Pronounced kærəˈpɑːtʃi by someone on Radio 3 the other night, to my utter astonishment.

    October 7, 2009

  • Care Apache, the king of the hippies

    October 7, 2009